valMEhttps://valme.io/
//valme.io/rss/all/tag/technology/en-usSun, 15 Sep 2019 04:58:30 -0500https://valme.io/c/modtalk/ynsqs/unpaid-and-abused-moderators-speak-out-against-reddit
Keeping Reddit free of racism, sexism and spam comes with a mental health risk. We spoke with 10 Reddit moderators about the abuse they face and lack of support from Reddit.

This article provides an overview and introduction to calculus. It's intended for general readers, nonspecialists, and shows the topic's key concepts in a transparent, approachable way.

The article's purpose is to help readers see that calculus is not only relatively easy to understand, but is a useful and accessible intellectual skill without which some aspects of the the modern world are indecipherable - population growth, space travel, climate change, epidemics and control of diseases, economic policy, investment strategies and others - all of which require a knowledge of how and why things change, the kind of knowledge calculus provides.

Some familiarity with secondary school algebra is desirable to be able to follow most of the article's content. Some new topics, such as functions, are introduced and explained before being used.

The article includes tutorial exercises that show concepts without overwhelming the reader in detail, and covers related topics such as differential equations and computer algebra systems.

...

While introducing calculus, this article tries to demolish a pervasive American myth - that calculus is outside the intellectual grasp of everyday people. In contrast to the practice in many other countries, American students are told that calculus is an advanced mathematical topic, one neither suitable for, nor within the mental abilities of, ordinary people. The author believes this is a crippling and misleading belief, one easily falsified by some exposure to the topic itself. In this article, the author strives to explain the mathematical concepts in the simplest, most accessible way.

...

The key idea of calculus, on which the entire field stands, is the relationship between a quantity and a rate of change in that quantity. For example, we might want to describe the position of a moving car as time passes:

The car's acceleration, controlled by the accelerator pedal, is a rate of change in the car's velocity.

The car's velocity, recorded by the speedometer, is a rate of change in the car's position.

Expressed in everyday language, position is "where you are", velocity is "how fast you're moving", and acceleration represents "how velocity is changing."

These three quantities - position, velocity and acceleration - are bound together in such a way that, with the methods of calculus, we can use any one of them to find the other two.

For example, we can note a car's speedometer (velocity) readings over time and use that to reconstruct the car's position, without any other information.

]]>Mon, 28 May 2018 09:57:30 -0500https://valme.io/c/teens/homeworkhelp/1wsqs/introduction-to-calculus-a-carefully-worded-overview-of-calculus-for-nonspecialists-and-the-simply-curious-written-by-the-man-who-created-apples-first-successful-word-processor-apple-writerc_prompthttps://valme.io/c/politics/9wsqs/rewarding-disobedience-2018-mit-media-lab-is-giving-out-a-no-strings-attached-cash-award-of-250000-for-disobedience-that-benefits-society
Nominations are now open for the second MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award, which carries a $250,000 cash prize, no strings attached.

This award will go to a person or group engaged in what we believe is an extraordinary example of disobedience for the benefit of society: work that impacts society in positive ways, and is consistent with a set of key principles, including nonviolence, creativity, courage, and responsibility for one’s actions. We invite nominations for work across disciplines (scientific research, civil rights, freedom of speech, human rights, and the freedom to innovate, for example).

You must fill out the online nomination form between May 16, 2018 and August 15, 2018. All required fields must be completed. You will receive an email confirmation acknowledging your nomination. A member of the selection committee may contact you for more information, if your nomination is chosen as a finalist. We will announce the winner on November 30, 2018.

Eligibility Requirements and Award Details

Recipient must be living at the time of nomination.

If an organization, it must be currently operational at the time of nomination.

Individuals, groups, and organizations cannot nominate themselves.

Recipient must have taken personal/professional risk in order to affect positive change.

If a group of people or an organization is awarded the prize, they will receive one $250,000 check to distribute at their own discretion.

This award is open to any person or group in the world as long as they follow the principles of nonviolent disobedience to impact society in positive ways. All disciplines are eligible.

]]>Thu, 17 May 2018 08:15:37 -0500https://valme.io/c/politics/9wsqs/rewarding-disobedience-2018-mit-media-lab-is-giving-out-a-no-strings-attached-cash-award-of-250000-for-disobedience-that-benefits-societyc_prompthttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/95sqs/then-they-came-for-the-internet-but-by-that-time
As proud supporters of Creative Commons, we were encouraged to see so many websites effectively shut down or "go dark" on January 18, 2012 in protest of the tyrannical SOPA/PIPA bills that the US government and Hollywood's chief lobbyist want to pass.

But we found it interesting that the primary revenue source for most all of these blacked-out websites is advertising or donations based upon the content of others. And that got us thinking...

Why is THIS the first time that internet powerhouses like Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Flickr, 4Chan, and Reddit have protested bad policy decisions by the government? Where were these powerhouses when NDAA was being passed, or while Guantanamo remained open with people being tortured, or when the CIA was kidnapping and "renditioning" innocent victims around the world, or when the highest government officials were openly sanctioning torture, or when the US military was bombing the hell out of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, or when non-violent protesters were being arrested and tased, or when children were being sexually assaulted by the TSA, or when our tax dollars were being used to bailout banks while so many remained unemployed, or when people were losing their homes from destructive government policies, or when divorce judges were removing good parents out of their children's lives, or when the media was being censored and controlled to cover-up government wrongs, or when the government was setting up so-called Free Speech Zones, or when the government was lying about WMDs in order to take us to war, or when people were being arrested for filming police, or when agent provocateurs were inciting violence, or when people were being arrested for blowing the whistle on government corruption, or when very sick patients were being prevented from getting the medicines they needed, or when the US Supreme Court was sanctioning taking private property from homeowners to give to corporations...

But then it hit us. In his famous statement "First they came," Pastor Martin Niemöller once blasted the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power as they purged group after group:

THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me

and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Who do you think the government is coming for next? Isn't it time for you to protest? What do you think about internet companies going dark to protest against the government? Should companies be using their power against more destructive governmental policies? Since Hollywood hates freedom, should we be protesting Hollywood?

]]>Thu, 05 Oct 2017 16:36:03 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/95sqs/then-they-came-for-the-internet-but-by-that-timebraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/z9sqs/the-age-of-nanotechnology
Throughout history, machines, tools, devices, etc. have become smaller. But not until recently have we been able to see down to the lowest level - to that of the nano. With electron microscopes, nanotechnology allows us to create things at the smallest levels possible, using atoms as the building blocks.

Nanotechnology is all about changing the properties of matter, atom by atom, to make new structures. Scientists and engineers study the properties of things in nature at the nano-level to uncover their secrets and understand how they behave, and then recreate those properties to bring us a plethora of new products (e.g., looking at plants to see the nanostructures that keep water from sticking to the leaves leads to products with surfaces that can repel water or filters that can clean the tiniest bugs from water and make it safe to drink).

One of the reasons for different behaviors at a nano-level is the surface area - more surface area means more area for reactions. Nano-sized particles have very large surface areas relative to volume. Big lumps of things aren't very reactive. This is one of the reasons why, for example, it's easier to get a fire started in your fireplace with small sticks instead of one, big log. Light also behaves differently at the nano-level (e.g., as gold gets very small, it stops looking like gold and instead reflects colors of red and purple). Even gravitational forces become negligible at the nano-level.

Another characteristic at the nano-level is that things become very "sticky." Particles stick together very easily, which allows for new and very complex structures to be formed. Sometimes, these particles can even "self-organize."

The human body is the quintessential nanotechnology machine. Our bodies are made up of cells. Each cell is a molecular machine. These machines perform our basic, life-sustaining functions, such as converting food into energy, keeping our bodies warm, or fixing damaged cells. Imagine that, one day, nanotechnologies will circulate in your body to hunt down diseases and kill them before they become a problem just as your body can currently can do naturally today.

Considering we are getting better at manipulating matter at the atomic level, is there anything we couldn't conceivably make? How does nanotechnology change our lives? Will nanotechnology help us make the biggest technological leaps in history? What would you like to see nanotechnology lead to?

]]>Thu, 05 Oct 2017 14:49:08 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/z9sqs/the-age-of-nanotechnologybraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/79sqs/the-rationality-of-alternative-medicine
As many mourn the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs, they use words such as visionary, brilliant, innovative, leader, entrepreneur, capitalist, and philanthropic to describe him. Many aren't aware though that Jobs was also an admirer of Ayn Rand's work, especially Atlas Shrugged, which Steve Wosniak said "was one of his guides in life."

Ayn Rand lashed out at all forms of mysticism, which she defined as "acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one's senses and one's reason." In The Ominous Parallels, Objectivist heir Leonard Peikoff refers to alternative medicine as a "mystic cult."

Natural health experts are taking an "I told you so"-position that it is "the cancer industry and its poisons," such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as well as the overall "modern medical system," that are preventing people from getting better. There are certainly alternative medicines that have gained more legitimacy as people use them (e.g., chiropractic therapy, acupuncture), so much so that they are now often prescribed by physicians and covered by insurance companies. Also, no one doubts the power of the placebo effect, where patients improve without medicines or surgical treatments. Additionally, the medical industry isn't known for always having the most ethical participants. And there's even scientific research that suggests you can starve cancer with food.

But, the challenge for alternative treatments is that the scientific evidence thus far appears conflicting and/or inconclusive. Having said that, many still swear by it, with an estimated 40% of people in the US using some form of alternative therapies.

Do you think Steve Jobs would still be alive if he had initially used treatments with more evidence-based treatments? What has your experience been with alternative treatments? If you, or someone you loved, had cancer, would you try or encourage them to try alternative treatments instead of modern treatments? Which alternative treatments do you support? As some evidence does exist to support alternative therapies, should alternative treatments be considered mysticism?

I'm sad that today I'm adding a slide to one of my live presentations, adding Steve Jobs to the list of famous people who died treating terminal diseases with woo rather than with medicine.

...Steve, it turned out, had been treating his pancreatic cancer with a special diet and other alternative therapies, prescribed by his naturopath.

Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates - if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it's removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a naturopathic diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.

Eventually it became clear to all involved that his alternative therapy wasn't working, and from then on, by all accounts, Steve aggressively threw money at the best that medical science could offer. But it was too late.

]]>Thu, 05 Oct 2017 13:54:34 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/79sqs/the-rationality-of-alternative-medicinebraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/b9sqs/breaking-the-laws-of-physics-will-philosophy-become-more-important
Just when you thought you understood how the world works, the tachyons come to shake things up.

Einstein's special theory of relativity proposes that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light. Remember E = mc2? The constant "c" in that famous equation is the speed of light in a vacuum and a "fundamental feature of the way space and time are unified." His theory is the basis of most everything in modern physics. And even though it's been validated by observation often, it still remains a theory.

If the results of this experiment are accurate, although it doesn't change reality, it changes some of the fundamentals we thought we understood about reality. (Well, you still can't divide by zero.)

This isn't the first time we were aware of this potential, but CERN's instrumentation is much more accurate than the prior discoveries. CERN doesn't want to believe it and they think it's premature to jump to conclusions. They've tried to find their error. They've looked for instrumental issues. They've been trying to figure it out for months. Everything seems to be in order. So now they are required by their ethics to put their measurement evidence out to the scientific community at-large to review, scrutinize, and evaluate.

What are some potential implications? For example, time is calculated using the speed of light. If you can go faster than the speed of light, you could potentially "outrun" time (ala the mythical faster-than-light tesseract from A Wrinkle in Time - yes, we're talking about time travel). Causality might not be accurate, for it functions within time (i.e., cause precedes effect). Imagine a world where effects occur before their causes. Those who believe in fate or destiny already do. The physics joke goes like this: The barman said: "Sorry, we don't serve neutrinos." A neutrino enters a bar.

But now to our point...

Philosophers are sometimes accused of mental masturbation - debating topics without any practical value. Science is implied to be the primary, rational method for understanding the nature of the world. But, whereas science thought (and still thinks) that there is a boundary on speed, maybe the CERN results suggest that new models are needed to understand how reality works.

New models describing reality might require new reasons to use them. Philosophy can be of practical use here. Philosophy can help us determine for what application our new understanding of reality should be applied. Philosophy can help us choose the reasons to apply our new knowledge. If speed is no longer a constraint, philosophy can be used to help direct us how best to use that faster speed. Science explains how reality works. Philosophy helps us decide what to do in reality and why we should do it.

What purpose does breaking the speed of light serve without philosophy? How can philosophy compliment this potential discovery? Does philosophy precede physics? What should philosophers be considering if the speed of light is not a constraint of reality? Why would this discovery be important? What are the philosophical implications if the future can affect the present? What impact does this have on the determinism vs. free will debate relative to morality? Should philosophers not even consider the implications of going faster than light with an assumption that another theory explains the results?

Sometimes also called retro-causation. A common feature of our world seems to be that in all cases of causation, the cause and the effect are placed in time so that the cause precedes its effect temporally. Our normal understanding of causation assumes this feature to such a degree that we intuitively have great difficulty imagining things differently. The notion of backward causation, however, stands for the idea that the temporal order of cause and effect is a mere contingent feature and that there may be cases where the cause is causally prior to its effect but where the temporal order of the cause and effect is reversed with respect to normal causation, i.e. there may be cases where the effect temporally, but not causally, precedes its cause.

The idea of backward causation should not be confused with that of time travel. These two notions are related to the extent that both agree that it is possible to causally affect the past. The difference, however, is that time travel involves a causal loop whereas backward causation does not. Causal loops for their part can only occur in a universe in which one has closed time-like curves. In contrast, backward causation may take place in a world where there are no such closed time-like curves. In other words, an ordinary system S taking part in time travel would preserve the temporal order of its proper time during its travel, it would keep the same time sense during its entire flight (a watch measuring S's proper time would keep moving clockwise); but if the same system S were to become involved in a process of backward causation, the order of its proper time would have to reverse in the sense that the time sense of the system would become opposite of what it was before its back-in-time travel (the watch will start to move counter-clockwise). So neither backward causation nor time travel logically entails each other and time travel is distinct from back-in-time travel...

A general notion of backward causation raises two sets of questions: those concerning conceptual problems and those that relate to empirical or physical matters. Among the first sets of questions that require a satisfactory answer are the following:

(i) Can metaphysics provide a notion of time that allows that the effect precede its cause? A proper notion of backward causation requires a static account of time in the sense that there is no objective becoming, no coming into being such that future events exist on the par with present and past events. It means that the future is real, the future does not merely consist of unrealised possibilities or even nothing at all. Ordinarily we may think of the past as a nothing that once was a something. But when asked what makes sentences about the past true or false, we would probably also say that it is the facts of the past that make present sentences about the past either true or false. The fact that I went to the cinema yesterday makes it true today when I say that I went to the cinema yesterday. This view is a realist one with respect to the past. If backward causation is to be conceptually possible it forces us to be realists with respect to the future. The future must contain facts, events with certain properties, and these facts can make sentences about the future true or false. Such a realist account is provided by static and tenseless theories of time. A static theory holds that the participation of time into the past, the present and the future depends on the perspective we human beings put on the world. The attribution of pastness, presentness and futureness to events is determined by what we take to exist at times earlier than and times later than the time of our experience.

(ii) Does backward causation mean that a future cause is changing something in the past? Even most protagonists consider it an unwarranted consequence that the notion, if true, involves the idea that the future is able to change the past. Their answer has therefore usually been that if we have the power to bring something about in the past, what came about really already existed when the past was present. We have to make a distinction between changing the past so it becomes different from what it was and influencing the past so it becomes what it was. A coherent notion of backward causation only requires that the future is able to have an influence on what happens in the past.

(iii) Can the cause be distinguished from its effect so that the distinction does not depend on a temporal ordering of the events? The adherents have usually tried to give an account of causation in which the cause and the effect are not seen as regularities between types of events. What is required is some account of the direction of causation which does not rely on the direction of time. Various alternative proposals refer to counterfactuals, probabilities, agents, manipulation and intervention, common cause or causal forks. It is, apparently, only a Humean notion of causation that needs the temporal identification of the cause and the effect. But there are also problems with some of the other accounts; for example, the Stalnaker-Lewis theory of counterfactual has difficulties with backtracking counterfactuals and backward causation because if c occurs later than e, the proposed method of truth evaluation assumes that e occurs in the relevant possible worlds in which c does not occur. In general, the assessment of a counterfactual conditional is carried out by assuming that the possible world should be identical with the actual world up to c; therefore, it is stipulated that the closest possible world is one in which everything happens just as in the actual world up to the time of c's occurrence which means, given e occurs before c, that it will include the occurrence of e. But then it is necessarily true that there is never a possible world closer to the actual world which includes c but not e. This creates a problem because we consider any causal connection between c and e as contingent.

(iv) Can the bilking argument be challenged in such a way that the mere possibility of intervention does not generate any serious paradoxes? The force of the bilking argument can, it seems, be weakened in various ways. First, one may hold that it is not a problem for our notion of backward causation that we can in principle intervene in the course of the events. If we actually do so and prevent A after B has occurred, then of course a particular later A (which does not exist) cannot be the cause of a particular earlier B (which exists). But in all those cases where nobody actually intervenes, events of the same type as A may be the cause of events of the same type as B. This is not different from what can happen in some cases of forward causation. Assume that P causes Q in the relevant circumstances. We may still prevent a particular P from happening, but at the same time a particular Q may nevertheless occur because in the given circumstances it is caused by another event than P. Second, if a later event A really causes an earlier one B, then it would be impossible to intervene into the cause of the event after B has happened and therefore impossible to prevent A from happening. If someone tries, she will by all means fail. It may intuitively sound strange as long as we think of backward causation as consisting of something we can control directly by our everyday actions. But if backward causation is a notion that is applicable only to processes that human beings are unable to control in any foreseeable way the notion would not provoke our intuitions so much.

]]>Thu, 05 Oct 2017 13:03:16 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/b9sqs/breaking-the-laws-of-physics-will-philosophy-become-more-importantbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/h9sqs/how-to-teach-computers-to-old-people
No significant intellectualism here in this video. Just an older couple learning how to use a computer to make you feel good.

May we all be as happy as they are at this age.

What's your experience been like trying to show your grandparents how to use technology?

]]>Wed, 04 Oct 2017 20:33:42 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/h9sqs/how-to-teach-computers-to-old-peoplebraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/g9sqs/til-the-first-pc-virus-was-called-brain-and-the-hackers-were-not-anonymous
Today I learned the first PC virus was called "brain" and was written in DOS only 25 years ago in 1986. The creators of the virus even gave their address. How did it move from PC to PC? Floppy disks of course. (The first Apple virus was called Elk Cloner and written a few years earlier by a 15-year old boy.)

Brain is the industry standard name for a computer virus that was released in its first form in September 1986[1], and is considered to be the first computer virus for MS-DOS. It infects the boot sector of storage media formatted with the DOS File Allocation Table (FAT) file system...

Welcome to the Dungeon (c) 1986 Brain & Amjads (pvt) Ltd VIRUS_SHOE RECORD V9.0 Dedicated to the dynamic memories of millions of viruses who are no longer with us today - Thanks GOODNESS!! BEWARE OF THE er..VIRUS : this program is catching program follows after these messages....$#@%$@!!

There are many minor and major variations to that version of the text. The virus slows down the floppy disk drive and makes seven kilobytes of memory unavailable to DOS. Brain was written by two brothers, Basit and Amjad Iqbal, who at the time lived in Chahmiran, near Lahore Railway Station, in Lahore, Pakistan. The brothers told TIME magazine they had written it to protect their medical software from piracy, and it was supposed to target copyright infringers only.[2] The cryptic message "Welcome to the Dungeon", a safeguard and reference to an early programming forum on Dungeon BBS, appeared after a year because the brothers licensed a beta version of the code...

The virus came complete with the brothers' address and three phone numbers, and a message that told the user that their machine was infected and to call them for inoculation:

The reason for this message is that the program was originally used to track a heart monitoring program for the IBM PC, and pirates were distributing bad copies of the disks. This tracking program was supposed to stop and track illegal copies of the disk. Another programmer copied the technique for DOS and it became the Brain virus. Unfortunately, the program also sometimes used the last 5k on an apple floppy, making additional saves to the disk by other programs impossible. The company was sued for damages and was quickly dissolved.

]]>Wed, 04 Oct 2017 18:01:15 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/g9sqs/til-the-first-pc-virus-was-called-brain-and-the-hackers-were-not-anonymousbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/34sqs/til-of-paper-that-can-be-erased-and-reused-260-times
Today I learned that there is a "paper" in production that can be erased and reused 260 times and currently costs about $2.00/sheet. (And we all know that, just like with any technology, that price will continue to drop.)

It's called i2R e-Paper which its Taiwanese developers say can be used up to 260 times, saving trees and money. Unlike other forms of e-paper, this version uses a thermal printer; the same kind used in fax machines. And when the message is no longer needed, the paper can be erased with the flip of a switch, and is ready to be reused.

The researchers say their product is the ideal replacement for paper signs and posters that are now produced in their millions to hang in store windows around the world. John Chen is the Vice President of the Industrial Technology Research Institute, where the paper was developed.

"I think the breakthrough was that traditional display devices usually require electricity to write. Our technology made it closer to how we would use normal paper. First, it does not require patterned electrodes. It is very light, soft, and rewritable. From this perspective, this is true e-paper."

What makes the i2R e-Paper stand out is its coating. Developers covered the plastic film with cholesteric liquid crystal. The compound doesn't require a backlight to print, and by adding optical agents of different pitches, it can produce different colors. And in the long-run, Chen says it will save energy, too.

"So far, it can be rewritten and cleared 260 times. In many cases, such as transportation tickets or ID badges, it will save you from making the same thing from paper 259 times. In terms of environmental protection, this is very meaningful."

An A4-sized piece of the e-paper costs about $2.00. The paper is already in production, and its developers hope that within two years, consumers will be able to help keep the earth a little greener, one page at a time.

But has PC Magazine now gone totally postal with this first class FAIL? They suggest that the US Postal Service, which is in a death spiral and on the verge of bankruptcy, should take over email. That's right - let that sink-in for a moment. Take one of the most effective communication methods the world has ever seen and turn it over to be centrally managed by a quasi-governmental agency that is $15 billion in debt, has lost $20 billion since 2007, currently requires a federal bailout of more than $50 billion, and has become almost obsolete because of that very technology that it would now control. That takes the idea of nationalization to a whole new level.

(As a reminder, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are quasi-governmental agencies - or call them government-sponsored enterprises, as it makes no difference. Remember what happened to them?)

The author also complains about non-standard email addressing and formatting and of "weird" nicknames. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Do you agree that this is a "whackjob" idea? Do you want the USPS to control your email? How about those of you outside the US - are you uncomfortable with this idea? Are you that unhappy with spam that you're willing to turn email regulation over to a government organization? What do you think of this author's idea? Should the USPS be bailed out or allowed to fail?

This idea first appeared in the 1980s when most people were doing email on CompuServe, MCI Mail and AT&T, along with a very few Arpanet users. Within a few short years, AOL became the dominant player, and finally the Web came along. Before you knew it, everyone was using email.

The USPS had early opportunities to jump in and probably take over the scene, which became chaotic over time and is now a mess. In fact, many people have abandoned email because of spam and other problems...

If the USPS had oversight over all email in one way or another, these illegal schemes could be considered mail fraud and something might be done about them, since the requirements for prosecution are less stringent than what the FBI might need...

I do not think it is too late for the USPS to introduce a spam-free email system for the public at large. Although, horrible stories about government intrusions have made the public paranoid, so the time might not be right.

]]>Wed, 04 Oct 2017 11:00:11 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/cgsqs/nationalize-email-to-the-us-postal-service-are-you-fucking-kidding-mebraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/lgsqs/til-about-pale-moon-a-faster-version-of-firefox-for-windows
Today I learned about Pale Moon - an optimized version of Firefox that is much faster than Firefox and optimized specifically for Windows.

Not only is it much faster than Firefox (perhaps even by as much as 25%) but all of your Firefox add-ons, settings, and bookmarks can be easily transferred over.

Effectively, Pale Moon removes rarely used features by most users, such as accessibility features and parental controls. It also optimizes the memory management better than Firefox and takes advantage of the latest computer hardware/processors (i.e., it doesn't assume that you're running on ancient hardware like Firefox does). You can find the technical details, including the differences between Pale Moon and Firefox here. And, of course, all the same mouse shortcuts that you love in Firefox are retained.

Why settle for a basic build of your Firefox browser on Windows Operating Systems when you can have one that is specifically made for getting the most out of your system? Mozilla does not provide optimized browser packages for Windows, meaning you may be losing speed and efficiency when you use your browser; and truth be told, most people use their browsers all the time! That needs to change, so, here is the Pale Moon project: Custom-built and optimized Firefox browsers for Windows Operating Systems. Make sure to get the most speed and efficiency out of your browser!

Of course, getting a more efficient browser is not just about optimizing the compilation process (building a program from its source code), but also about carefully choosing features and knowing how to choose the best setup. This means that this browser, however extremely close to Firefox in the way it works, does not have all the functions that Firefox has. A few, carefully selected, features have been disabled that are not in high demand, and that do not interfere with the way web pages are displayed or function; all to maximize speed and efficiency of the browser. Please see the page with technical details to learn exactly what the browser supports, and what it doesn't support. In short, if you need accessibility features or parental controls, then please visit the firefox homepage and get the official, non-optimized build.

]]>Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:33:00 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/lgsqs/til-about-pale-moon-a-faster-version-of-firefox-for-windowsbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/1gsqs/til-you-can-run-a-diesel-engine-car-on-used-vegetable-oil
Today I learned that you can run a diesel engine car on waste vegetable oil (e.g., oil that's been used to cook). It is less harmful to the environment, less toxic to people and animals, and runs about 20 cents/gallon. Big surprise: it's against the law in the US. (The EPA only allows biodiesel - not vegetable oil.) Thanks big oil.

(Interesting side-note: Rudolph Diesel, the inventor of diesel engines, designed them to run on peanut oil. His goal was to "enable farmers to produce their own "fuel" from their crops for their machinery.")

Diesel engines work similarly to gasoline engines, with the primary difference being how they convert fuel to energy. "In a gasoline engine, fuel is mixed with air, compressed by pistons and ignited by sparks from spark plugs. In a diesel engine, however, the air is compressed first, and then the fuel is injected. Because air heats up when it's compressed, the fuel ignites."

There is mixed data on how vegetable oil affects an engine's lifespan.

As the entire country mourns over the increase in gasoline / fuel costs, there is a small section of society that secretly wants fuel prices to go to the moon. With every passing week, this "secret society," travels around our beautiful country at little or no cost for fuel.

In 2006, I spent over $7500 dollars on gasoline. My business requires that i do some traveling, and after I reviewed the expenditures, I decided to implement an alternative that I'd been studying about for a couple years. I went out and purchased a 25-year-old diesel pickup truck as an additional vehicle, and began the journey of running a vehicle on an alternative fuel. That fuel is waste vegetable oil. There are four methods to run waste vegetable oil in a diesel vehicle, SVO (straight vegetable oil), bio diesel (chemical process costing about $1 a gallon), Mixing waste vegetable oil with the diesel fuel, and Mixing waste vegetable oil with RUG (regular unleaded gasoline). I chose to run Straight Vegetable Oil.

The initial expense for the diesel truck was $2500, I spent approximately $2000 converting my first vehicle to waste vegetable oil. The cost seemed excessive at the time, and the many hours of working in the garage making modifications and changes to enhance the performance of the system seemed to be a never ending affair....But, after the first year, I became an expert with my particular diesel vehicle, and I was burning a fuel that cost at the most 20 cents a gallon.

I started out looking for the waste vegetable oil at local restaurants, and took an inventory of who was collecting the oil now, and learned with experience, which oil to pursue and which oil to avoid. I took a "business" approach to collecting the oil, and set up contracts with a few restaurants, and within few months had hundreds of gallons of "extra" WVO (waste vegetable oil). During the first few months of collecting oil, I met a full time renderer that helped me with my containers and informed me about what was going on in the rendering market. As I collected oil "here and there," a few connections developed and I picked up some other WVO pickup points. The individual I met in the rendering business, offered to purchase all of my extra WVO, and then gave me a few stops in my area to also collect oil at, so he didn't have to travel into my area.

There is "SO MUCH," waste veggie oil out there, I'm really surprised that more people haven't made the "switch" to WVO. After 50,000 miles on the initial vehicle, and having burned over 3000 gallons of 20-cent fuel, the payoff is rather obvious. This year I've sold over 4000 gallons of extra waste veggie oil, and that is starting to make an impact, when I'm getting over $1.25 per gallon just to collect the WVO.

So, if you want to "make a difference," in your monthly "bottom line," convert to waste vegetable oil. It's quite the experience, you will be the only person in your area doing it, and you can save a ton of money.

In this video, Mike George makes the argument that our anger is increasing because our expectations are increasing but not being fulfilled. He also seems to suggest that our increasing anger is a result of jealousy - seeing others having their expectations fulfilled while yours aren't.

We live in a period now where we have so much access to information (e.g., through the Web, through TV, through newspapers) and are able to see so many examples of people getting what they want and having their expectations met while we continue to struggle. And this leads us to want more and to expect more. When you get what you want, then you are happy and content with yourself.

He thinks another contributing factor is speed that is increased through technology. We expect more faster. And when we don't get what we want quickly, we get frustrated and that frustration breeds anger.

He also thinks that some people have an emotional addiction to being angry because the anger releases the chemicals adrenaline and cortisol in our bodies. He thinks they are looking to create an experience that makes them angry to gain the benefits of these chemical releases, almost as if a drug addict needs a "fix."

Do you feel your irritation, anger, or hatred is growing as the days pass? Who or what is the target of these feelings? Do you think it's good to sometimes get angry? Is it your responsibility to temper your anger? Do you go looking for reasons to be angry? Is being angry an emotional hit for you? Should we be trying to free ourselves of anger by getting rid of our wants, desires, and expectations?

When it comes to protecting civil liberties, it just keeps getting worse. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now testing what it calls Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST). It is purportedly designed to identify people who intend to commit a terrorist act.

It has been compared to the 'pre-crime' technology used in the movie Minority Report. Without touching you, the technology detects physiological properties to judge a person's state of mind and malicious intent. In other words, anywhere you walk, the technology could be reading your physiology and making judgments as to whether or not you should be questioned and/or arrested. According to one source, the DHS claims the technology is accurate 70% of the time and "the other 30 percent will probably get out of Guantanamo Bay in a couple of years."

Is nothing sacred anymore when it comes to civil liberties? When will you say "enough is enough?" Do you think this technology makes us safer? Does it even matter if the technology works or not - should this kind of technology even be in use? Is the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" not even considered by governments anymore? Is that which keeps us safe also keeping us free?

You could soon be taking part in a novel security programme that can supposedly 'sense' whether you are planning to commit a crime.

Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

The tactic has drawn comparisons with the science-fiction concept of 'pre-crime', popularized by the film Minority Report, in which security services can detect someone's intention to commit a crime.

]]>Tue, 03 Oct 2017 19:41:34 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/4gsqs/are-safety-and-freedom-oppositesbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/xgsqs/til-the-power-of-the-scroll-wheel-in-firefox
Today I learned the power of the scroll wheel in Firefox. You can use it to close tabs (click the scroll wheel on a tab), open hyperlinks in new pages (click the scroll wheel on a link), scroll through tabs (scroll over tabs), zoom a page (press Ctrl and scroll), and open a group of bookmarks (click the scroll wheel over the group).

To close a tab: Position your mouse cursor over the tab in Firefox and click the scroll wheel. (Much quicker than clicking the x.)

To open hyperlinks in a new tab: Position your mouse cursor over the hyperlink in Firefox and click the scroll wheel. (Much quicker than right-clicking on the link and choosing Open Link in New Tab.)

To scroll through tabs: When you have too many tabs in Firefox for the width of the page, you can scroll through them by positioning your mouse cursor over the tabs and using the scroll bar. (Much quicker than using the arrows.)

To zoom a page: To increase the size/zoom level of a page in Firefox, hold the Ctrl key down and use the scroll bar. (Much quicker than View - Zoom.)

To open a group of bookmarks: If you have a group of bookmars (and if you don't, you should - e.g., your "morning bookmarks" that include all of the sites that you read each day or always keep on your browser), position your mouse cursor in Firefox over the bookmark group and click the scroll wheel. (Much quicker than right-clicking Open All in Tabs.)

To move up and down: Click the scroll wheel on a page and then move your mouse up or down to quickly scroll through it. (Much less effort than scrolling by turning the scroll wheel or moving the scroll bar on large pages.)

]]>Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:40:33 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/xgsqs/til-the-power-of-the-scroll-wheel-in-firefoxbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/tgsqs/ray-kurzweil-bringing-my-dreams-to-real-life-in-a-virtual-world
When I was much younger, I told my father I believed I would live forever. He asked how that would happen and gently reminded me that we all die sooner or later. I explained that I believed we would figure it out in my lifetime. He laughed, as a father might, when his child says something funny and irrational. I understood his disbelief, but I held fast to my position. Something inside me knew I was right.

Over the years, this idea had faded somewhat. Such ideas dull as the everyday grind of life wears you down with reality. But that's also one of the great things about ideas: their dormant seeds remain, ready to sprout roots with the slightest hint of encouragement by light or water.

I've recently discovered Second Life, a 3D virtual world. One of Kurzweil's predictions involves using nanobots to download our brains and personalities into a virtual world intact (i.e., senses and all). This got me thinking: maybe immortality doesn't have to be living forever in the real world. In the future, maybe immortality will mean living forever in a virtual world. After all, in the real world, we are limited by our ability to manipulate matter while, in a virtual world, we are not. Intriguing idea, don't you think? He discusses this in his recent documentary Transcendent Man: The Life and Ideas of Ray Kurzweil.

What if you could download yourself into a virtual world, such as Second Life, and be stored there with the ability to feel and maybe even survive the death of your biological body? Would you do this? What are some of the potential dangers or repercussions of such a choice? Do you view this as a good thing for humanity or is it its end?

]]>Tue, 03 Oct 2017 12:39:08 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/tgsqs/ray-kurzweil-bringing-my-dreams-to-real-life-in-a-virtual-worldbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/b6sqs/til-about-the-ig-noble-prize
Today I learned about the Ig Noble prizes, which "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

Some people covet it, others flee from it. Some see it as a hallmark of civilization, others as a scuff mark. Some laugh with it, others laugh at it. Many praise it, a few condemn it, others are just mystified. And many people are madly in love with it.

It is the Ig Nobel Prize.

This is the ninth year we've been awarding Ig Nobel Prizes. Perhaps you have been lucky enough to win one. That's not quite as improbable as it may sound: many of the 976 cowinners of the 1993 Ig Nobel Literature Prize may still be unaware of their good fortune. It's not clear whether these individuals, who coauthored a paper that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 329, no. 10), ever exchange information or hellos, or have even heard each others' names spoken. Their paper, by the way, was remarkable for having 100 times as many authors as pages - that is what won them the prize.

Each year, ten Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded. The selection criterion is simple. The prizes are for "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced." Examine that phrase carefully. It covers a lot of ground. It says nothing as to whether a thing is good or bad, commendable or pernicious...

I raise this matter of good or bad, because the world in general seems to enjoy classifying things as being either one or the other. The Ig Nobel Prizes aside, most prizes, in most places, for most purposes are clearly designed to sanctify the goodness or badness of the recipients. Olympic medals go to very good athletes. Worst-dressed prizes go to badly dressed celebrities. Nobel Prizes go to scientists, writers, and others who excel. Occasional mistakes and omissions happen, sure, but these prizes, and most others, are meant to honor the extremes of humanity - those whose achievements should be seen as very good or very bad.

The Ig Nobel Prize isn't like that. The Ig, as it is known, honors the great muddle in which most of us exist much of the time. Life is confusing. Good and bad get all mixed up. Yin can be hard to distinguish from yang. Ditto for data from artifact and, sometimes, up from down...

The Ig Nobel Board of Governors follows the same dictum that is said to inspire physicians: "First, do no harm."

There are in this world people who are quick to judge, condemn, and punish others. Some of these unhappy people are in positions of authority and might be inclined to, say, punish and ridicule someone in their lab who wins a goofy, meaningless prize. Because we know that such people exist, the Ig Nobel Board of Governors consults with scientists who are under strong consideration for an Ig, to ask whether winning might in any way cause them professional difficulties. In cases where there appears to be a genuine risk, the Prize is not awarded to that person, but goes instead to some other, equally worthy soul. To date, this has happened in about six cases.

]]>Tue, 03 Oct 2017 11:03:59 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/b6sqs/til-about-the-ig-noble-prizebraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/66sqs/til-about-stumbleupon-toolbar-options
For those of you who aren't familiar with it, StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that shows you random web pages based upon categories that you like. It learns very quickly what you like and don't like. It's channel surfing for the web. If you're interested in discovering the hidden gems on the web, including new ideas, articles, pictures, videos, music, games, etc., StumbleUpon is a must-have. (Although, be warned: StumbleUpon is highly addictive and you will often find yourself spending hours using it.)

StumbleUpon has a toolbar plug-in for Firefox that is a must-have. For the longest time, I would click the Stumble button to bring up a random, new page, upvote it or downvote it, and then repeat the process. It requires two clicks as well as moving the mouse between the buttons.

However, today I learned that, within the toolbar's options and on the Configuration tab, there are two Stumble After Rating settings that you can check to automatically stumble to the next page after clicking an upvote or downvote. Not only does this save you a click but it also saves you the effort of moving the mouse to the Stumble button.

]]>Mon, 02 Oct 2017 06:25:46 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/66sqs/til-about-stumbleupon-toolbar-optionsbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/cvsqs/epic-win-making-a-better-world-with-video-games
"Gamers are super-empowered hopeful individuals." They are masters at figuring things out, even medical problems. So who wants to use gaming to change the world?

Braincrave.com is the most active intellectual discussion group in the virtual gaming world Second Life. We daily debate these issues and solutions, and then some. We talk about things that matter. Is it a silly idea to think we could improve reality through virtual worlds and gaming? Can gaming be used to solve real life problems? How can we use gaming to make the world a better place? Can you use gaming to change people's philosophies? What game design ideas do you have to help solve the world's problems?

As a result of this discussion, we will consolidate some of the ideas and send them off to Jane McGonigal in hopes she can use them to accomplish her goal: "to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games."

I'm Jane McGonigal. I'm a game designer. I've been making games online now for 10 years. And my goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games. Now, I have a plan for this, and it entails convincing more people, including all of you, to spend more time playing bigger and better games.

Right now we spend three billion hours a week playing online games. Some of you might be thinking, "That's a lot of time to spend playing games." Maybe too much time, considering how many urgent problems we have to solve in the real world. But actually, according to my research, at The Institute For The Future, it's actually the opposite is true. Three billion hours a week is not nearly enough game play to solve the world's most urgent problems.

In fact, I believe that if we want to survive the next century on this planet, we need to increase that total dramatically. I've calculated the total we need at 21 billion hours of game play every week. So, that's probably a bit of a counterintuitive idea, so, I'll say it again, let it sink in. If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week, by the end of the next decade. (Laughter) No. I'm serious. I am.

Here's why. This picture pretty much sums up why I think games are so essential to the future survival of the human species. (Laughter) Truly. This is a portrait by a photographer named Phil Toledano. He wanted to capture the emotion of gaming. So, he set up a camera in front of gamers while they were playing. And this is a classic gaming emotion. Now, if you're not a gamer you might miss some of the nuance in this photo. You probably see the sense of urgency, a little bit of fear, but intense concentration, deep deep focus on tackling a really difficult problem.

If you are a gamer, you will notice a few nuances here, the crinkle of the eyes up, and around the mouth is a sign of optimism. And the eyebrows up is surprise. This is a gamer who is on the verge of something called an epic win. (Laughter) Oh, you've heard of that. Okay. Good. So we have some gamers among us. An epic win is an outcome that is so extraordinarily positive you had no idea it was even possible until you achieved it. It was almost beyond the threshold of imagination. And when you get there you are shocked to discover what you are truly capable of. That is an epic win. This is a gamer on the verge of an epic win. And this is the face that we need to see on millions of problem-solvers all over the world as we try to tackle the obstacles of the next century. The face of someone who, against all odds is on the verge of an epic win.

Now, unfortunately this is more of the face that we see in everyday life now as we try to tackle urgent problems. This is what I call the "I'm Not Good At Life" face. And this is actually me making it. Can you see? Yes. Good. This is actually me making the "I'm Not Good At Life" face. This is a piece of graffiti in my old neighborhood in Berkeley, California, where I did my PhD on why we're better in games than we are in real life. And this is a problem that a lot of gamers have. We feel that we are not as good in reality as we are in games.

And I don't mean just good as in successful, although that's part of it. We do achieve more in game worlds. But I also but I also mean good as in motivated to do something that matters, inspired to collaborate and to cooperate. And when we're in game worlds I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment's notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long at it takes, to get up after failure and try again. And in real life, when we face failure, when we confront obstacles, we often don't feel that way. We feel overcome. We feel overwhelmed. We feel anxious, maybe depressed, frustrated or cynical. We never have those feelings when we're playing games, they just don't exist in games. So, that's what I wanted to study when I was a graduate student.

What about games makes it impossible to feel that we can't achieve everything? How can we take those feelings from games and apply them to real-world work? So, I looked at games like World of Warcraft, which is really the ideal collaborative problem solving environment. And I started to notice a few things that make epic wins so possible in online worlds.

So, the first thing is, whenever you show up in one of these online games especially in World of Warcraft, there are lots and lots of different characters who are willing to trust you with a world-saving mission, right away. But not just any mission, it's a mission that is perfectly matched with your current level in the game. Right? So, you can do it. They never give you a challenge that you can't achieve. But it is on the verge of what you're capable of. So, you have to try hard. But there is no unemployment in World of Warcraft. There is no sitting around wringing your hands. There is always something specific and important to be done. And there are also tons of collaborators. Everywhere you go, hundreds of thousands of people ready to work with you to achieve your epic mission.

It's not something that we have in real life that easily, this sense that at our fingertips are tons of collaborators. And also there is this epic story, this inspiring story of why we're there, and what we're doing. And then we get all this positive feedback. You guys have heard of leveling up and plus-one strength, and plus-one intelligence. We don't get that kind of constant feedback in real life. When I get off this stage I'm not going to have plus-one speaking, and plus-one crazy idea, plus-20 crazy idea. I don't get that feedback in real life.

Now, the problem with collaborative online environments like World of Warcraft is that it's so satisfying to be on the verge of an epic win all the time, that we decide to spend all our time in these game worlds. It's just better than reality. So, so far, collectively all the World of Warcraft gamers have spent 5.93 million years solving the virtual problems of Azeroth. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It might sound like it's a bad thing. But to put that in context: 5.93 million years ago was when our earliest primate human ancestors stood up. That was the first upright primate.

Okay, so when we talk about how much time we're currently investing in playing games, the only way it makes sense to even think about it, is to talk about time at the magnitude of human evolution, which is an extraordinary thing. But it's also apt. Because it turns out that by spending all this time playing games, we are actually changing what we are capable of as human beings. We are evolving to be a more collaborative and hearty species. This is true. I believe this.

So, consider this really interesting statistic. It was recently published by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games, by the age of 21. Now 10,000 hours is a really interesting number for two reasons. First of all, for children in the United States 10,080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.

So, we have an entire parallel track of education going on where young people are learning as much about what it takes to be a good gamer as they are learning about everything else in school. And some of you have probably read Malcom Gladwell's new book Outliers. So, you would have heard of his theory of success, the 10,000 hour theory of success. It's based on this great cognitive science research that if we can master 10,000 hours at effortful study, at anything by the age of 21, we will be virtuosos at it. We will be as good at whatever we do as the greatest people in the world. And so, now what we're looking at is an entire generation of young people who are virtuoso gamers.

So, the big question is, "What exactly are gamers getting so good at?" Because if we could figure that out we would have a virtually unprecedented human resource on our hands. This is how many people we now have in the world who spend at least an hour a day playing online games. These are our virtuoso gamers. 500 million people who are extraordinarily good at something. And in the next decade we're going to have another billion gamers who are extraordinarily good at whatever that is. If you don't know it already, this is coming. The game industry is developing consoles that are low energy and that work with the wireless phone networks instead of broadband Internet so that gamers all over the world, particularly in India, China, Brazil, can get online. They expect one billion more gamers in the next decade. It will bring us up to 1.5 billion gamers.

So, I've started to think about what these games are making us virtuosos at. Here are the four things I came up with. The first is urgent optimism. Okay. Think of this as extreme self-motivation. Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success. Gamers always believe that an epic win is possible, and that it is always worth trying, and trying now. Gamers don't sit around. Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. There is a lot of interesting research that shows that we like people better after we play a game with them, even if they've beaten us badly. And the reason is, it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone. We trust that they will spend their time with us, that they will play by the same rules, value the same goal, they'll stay with the game until it's over.

And so, playing a game together actually builds up bonds and trust and cooperation. And we actually build stronger social relationships as a result. Blissful productivity. I love it. You know there is a reason why the average World of Warcraft gamer plays for 22 hours a week, kind of a half-time job. It's because we know, when we're playing a game, that we're actually happier working hard, than we are relaxing, or hanging out. We know that we are optimized, as human beings, to do hard meaningful work. And gamers are willing to work hard all the time, if they're given the right work.

Finally, epic meaning. Gamers love to be attached to awe-inspiring missions to human planetary-scale stories. So, just one bit of trivia that helps put that into perspective. So, you all know Wikipedia, biggest wiki in the world. Second biggest wiki, in the world, with nearly 80,000 articles is the World of Warcraft wiki. Five million people use it every month. They have compiled more information about World of Warcraft on the Internet than any other topic covered on any other wiki in the world. They are building an epic story. They are building an epic knowledge resource about the World of Warcraft.

Okay, so these are four superpowers that add up to one thing. Gamers are super-empowered hopeful individuals. These are people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. And the only problem is that they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worlds and not the real world. That's the problem that I'm trying to solve.

There is an economist named Edward Castronova. His work is brilliant. He looks at why people are investing so much time and energy and money, in online worlds. And he says, "We're witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments." And he's an economist. So, he's rational. And he says ... (Laughter) Not like me -- I'm a game designer; I'm exuberant. But he says, that this makes perfect sense, because gamers can achieve more in online worlds than they can in real life. They can have stronger social relationships in games than they can have in real life. They get better feedback and feel more rewarded in games than they do in real life. So, he says for now it makes perfect sense for gamers to spend more time in virtual worlds than the real world. Now, I also agree that that is rational, for now. But it is not, by any means, an optimal situation. We have to start making the real world more like a game.

So, I take my inspiration from something that happened 2,500 years ago. These are ancient dice, made out of sheep's knuckles. Right? Before we had awesome game controlers we had sheep's knuckles. And these represent the first game equipment designed by human beings. And if you're familiar with the work of the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, you might know this history. Which is the history of who invented games and why. Herodotus says that games, particularly dice games were invented in the kingdom of Lydia during a time of famine.

Apparently, there was such a severe famine, that the king of Lydia decided that they had to do something crazy. People were suffering. People were fighting. It was an extreme situation. They needed an extreme solution. So, according to Herodotus, they invented dice games and they set up a kingdom-wide policy. On one day, everybody would eat. And on the next day, everybody would play games. And they would be so immersed in playing the dice games because games are so engaging, and immerse us in such satisfying blissful productivity, they would ignore the fact that they had no food to eat. And then on the next day, they would play games. And on the next day they would eat.

And according to Herodotus, they passed 18 years this way, surviving through a famine, by eating on one day, and playing games on the next. Now, this is exactly, I think, how we're using games today. We're using games to escape real-world suffering. We're using games to get away from everything that's broken in the real environment, everything that's not satisfying about real life, and we're getting what we need from games.

But it doesn't have to end there. This is really exciting. According to Herodotus, after 18 years the famine wasn't getting better, So, the king decided they would play one final dice game. They divided the entire kingdom in half. They played one dice game, and the winners of that game got to go on an epic adventure. They would leave Lydia, And they would go out in search of a new place to live, leaving behind just enough people to survive on the resources that were available, and hopefully to take the civilization somewhere else where they could thrive.

Now, this sounds crazy, right? But recently, DNA evidence has shown that the Etruscans, who lead to the Roman empire, actually share the same DNA as the ancient Lydians. And so, recently, scientists have suggested that Herodotus's crazy story is actually true. And geologists have found evidence of a global cooling that lasted for nearly 20 years that could have explained the famine. So, this crazy story might be true. They might have actually saved their culture by playing games, escaping to games for 18 years and then been so inspired, and knew so much about how to come together with games, that they actually saved the entire civilization that way.

Okay, we can do that. We've been playing Warcraft since 1994. That was the first real-time strategy game from the World of Warcraft series. That was 16 years ago. They played dice games for 18 years, we've been playing Warcraft for 16 years. I say we are ready for our own epic game. Now, they had half the civilization go off in search of a new world. So, that's where I get my 21 billion hours a week of game-play from. Let's get half of us to agree to spend an hour a day playing games, until we solve real-world problems.

Now, I know you're asking, "How are we going to solve real world problems in games?" Well, that's what I have devoted my work to over the past few years, at The Institute For The Future. We have this banner in our offices in Palo Alto, and it expresses our view of how we should try to relate to the future. We do not want to try to predict the future. What we want to do is make the future. We want to imagine the best case scenario outcome And then we want to empower people to make that outcome a reality. We want to imaging epic wins, and then give people the means to achieve the epic win.

I'm just going to very briefly show you three games that I've made that are an attempt to give people the means to create epic wins in their own futures. So, this is World Without Oil. We made this game in 2007. This is an online game in which you try to survive an oil shortage. The oil shortage is fictional, but we put enough online content out there for you to believe that it's real, and to live your real life as if we've run out of oil. So, when you come to the game you sign up, you tell us where you live. And then we give you real-time news videos data feeds that show you exactly how much oil costs, what's not available, how food supply is being affected, how transportation is being affected, if schools are closed, if their is rioting. And you have to figure out how you would live your real life as if this were true. And then we ask you to blog about it, to post videos, to post photos.

We piloted this game with 1,700 players in 2007. And we've tracked them for the three years since. And I can tell you that this is a transformative experience. Nobody wants to change how they live just because it's good for the world, or because we are supposed to. But if you immerse them in an epic adventure and tell them, "We've run out of oil." This is an amazing story and adventure for you to go on. Challenge yourself to see how you would survive. Most of our players have kept up the habits that they learned in this game.

So, for the next world-saving game, we decided to aim higher, bigger problem than just peak oil. We did a game called Superstruct at The Institute For The Future. And the premise was, a supercomputer has calculated that humans have only 23 years left on the planet. This supercomputer was called the Global Extinction Awareness System, of course. We asked people to come online almost like a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. You know Jerry Bruckheimer movies, you form a dream team. You've got the astronaut, the scientist, the ex-convict, and they all have something to do to save the world. (Laughter)

But in our game, instead of just having five people on the dream team, we said everybody is on the dream team, and it's your job to invent the future of energy, the future of food, the future of health, the future of security and the future of the social safety net. We had 8,000 people play that game for eight weeks. They came up with 500 insanely creative solutions that you can go online, if you Google "Superstruct", and see.

So, finally, the last game, We're launching it March 3rd. This is a game done with the World Bank Institute. If you complete the game you will be certified by the World Bank Institute, as a Social Innovator, class of 2010. Working with universities all over sub-Saharan Africa, And we are inviting them to learn social innovation skills. We've got a graphic novel. We've got leveling up in skills like local insight, knowledge networking, sustainability, vision, and resourcefulness. I would like to invite all of you to please share this game with young people, anywhere in the world, particularly in developing areas, who might benefit from coming together to try to start to imagine their own social enterprises to save the world.

So, I'm going to wrap up now. I want to ask a question. What do you think happens next? We've got all these amazing gamers, we've got these games that are kind of pilots of what we might do, but none of them have saved the real world yet. Well I hope that you will agree with me that gamers are a human resource that we can use to do real-world work, that games are a powerful platform for change. We have all these amazing superpowers, blissful productivity, the ability to weave a tight social fabric, this feeling of urgent optimism, and the desire for epic meaning.

I really hope that we can come together to play games that matter, to survive on this planet for another century. And that's my hope that you will join me in making and playing games like this. When I look forward to the next decade, I know two things for sure, that we can make any future we can imagine, and we can play any games we want. So, I say let the world-changing games begin. Thank you. (Applause)

]]>Sun, 01 Oct 2017 06:34:58 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/cvsqs/epic-win-making-a-better-world-with-video-gamesbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/kvsqs/engineering-the-perfect-human
Recently, Harvard University had a panel discussing the legacy of the Human Genome Project. Started in 1990, and with scientists from six countries and initial funding of $3 billion, the project published the full sequence of about 21,000 genes that are the basic instructions of building a human. Needless to say, the implications of better understanding human biology at a genetic level are enormous. For example, with such information, we can better fight or prevent disease. And the costs to decode genomes is dropping dramatically - "[t]echnology today can do in five minutes a decoding task that would have taken a year to complete a decade ago." Needless to say, these are very exciting times in this field.

But perhaps caution should temper our excitement as the enormous implications of understanding our biology come with ethical questions that have not been answered and might never be answered. For example, it's only a matter of time when we will be able to manipulate or engineer genes to alter exactly the traits we want. Should we? Similar to the movie Gattaca, which proclaims that there is no gene for the human spirit, should we use science to create "perfect" human beings? How could genetic engineering negatively intervene in our evolution and affect future generations? Also, in a world where genetic engineering is possible but expensive and, therefore, only those with the proper financial resources can benefit, will we see the ultimate class war - the "perfect" vs. the "imperfect?" The science is getting to the point where these are no longer theoretical questions. If you could, would you want to be genetically engineered? What about your children?

FTA:

Enhancement engineering is widely regarded as both scientifically and ethically problematic. From a scientific standpoint, it is unlikely that we will soon be able to enhance normally functioning genes without risking grave side effects. For example:

Enhancing an individual's height beyond his or her naturally ordained level may inadvertently cause stress to other parts of the organism, such as the heart.

Moreover, many of the traits that might be targeted for enhancement (e.g., intelligence or memory) are genetically multifactorial, and have a strong environmental component. Thus, alteration of single genes would not likely achieve the desired outcome.

These problems are magnified, and additional problems arise, when we move from somatic cell enhancements to germline enhancements.

In addition to the problem of disseminating unforeseen consequences across generations, we are faced with questions about whether future generations would share their predecessors' views about the desirability of the traits that have been bequeathed to them. Future generations are not likely to be ungrateful if we deprive them of genes associated with horrible diseases, but they may well feel limited by choices we have made regarding their physical, cognitive, or emotional traits. In short, there is a danger that social-historical trends and biases could place genetic limitations on future generations...

Once we pinpoint the genetic basis for diseases and other phenotypic traits, what parameters should be set for the acquisition and use of genetic information? The key issue to be considered here is the use of genetic screening. Screening for diseases with the due consent of a patient or a legal proxy is generally viewed as ethically permissible, but even this form of screening can create some significant ethical challenges. Knowledge that one is or may be affected by a serious disease can create difficult situations for both patients and their families. Consider:

If a test is positive, what options, medical or otherwise, will be available to ameliorate the condition?

Will the patient's relatives be informed that they too may be affected by the ailment?

A new cyberweapon could take down the entire internet - and there's not much that current defences can do to stop it. So say Max Schuchard at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and his colleagues, the masterminds who have created the digital ordnance. But thankfully they have no intention of destroying the net just yet. Instead, they are suggesting improvements to its defences.

Schuchard's new attack pits the structure of the internet against itself. Hundreds of connection points in the net fall offline every minute, but we don't notice because the net routes around them. It can do this because the smaller networks that make up the internet, known as autonomous systems, communicate with each other through routers. When a communication path changes, nearby routers inform their neighbours through a system known as the border gateway protocol (BGP). These routers inform other neighbours in turn, eventually spreading knowledge of the new path throughout the internet.

A previously discovered method of attack, dubbed ZMW - after its three creators Zhang, Mao and Wang, researchers in the US who came up with their version four years ago - disrupts the connection between two routers by interfering with BGP to make it appear that the link is offline. Schuchard and colleagues worked out how to spread this disruption to the entire internet and simulated its effects...

The attack requires a large botnet - a network of computers infected with software that allows them to be externally controlled: Schuchard reckons 250,000 such machines would be enough to take down the internet. Botnets are often used to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which bring web servers down by overloading them with traffic, but this new line of attack is different.

"Normal DDoS is a hammer; this is more of a scalpel," says Schuchard. "If you cut in the wrong places then the attack won't work."

An attacker deploying the Schuchard cyberweapon would send traffic between computers in their botnet to build a map of the paths between them. Then they would identify a link common to many different paths and launch a ZMW attack to bring it down. Neighbouring routers would respond by sending out BGP updates to reroute traffic elsewhere. A short time later, the two sundered routers would reconnect and send out their own BGP updates, upon which attack traffic would start flowing in again, causing them to disconnect once more. This cycle would repeat, with the single breaking and reforming link sending out waves of BGP updates to every router on the internet. Eventually each router in the world would be receiving more updates than it could handle - after 20 minutes of attacking, a queue requiring 100 minutes of processing would have built up.

Last month we reported on the FCC's "ambitious" national broadband plan which includes the goal of providing 100 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload speeds to 100 million U.S. homes. Sounds like a lofty goal doesn't it? Not when you consider what the folks living in Hong Kong have today. Residents there now have access to an affordable 1 Gbps connection according to a report by Convergence Conversation.

Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), a local Internet provider, announced a jaw dropping deal compared to what U.S. citizens have access to. The offer includes a symmetric 1 Gbps broadband connection for $26 a month. If you only need a 100 Mbps connection they have that too. The 100 Mbps service, launched back in November, only costs $13 a month...

The U.S. prides itself on being a leader in a number of things including technology. Clearly, we are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to broadband service. How embarrassing. While we talk of lofty goals like 100 Mbps connections to 100 million homes a company in Hong Kong has already done it and they now have a 1 Gbps offering. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the subscriptions are cheap. Their 1 Gbps service at $26 a month is cheaper than most high speed broadband plans in the U.S. which are much slower.

]]>Sat, 30 Sep 2017 15:07:50 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/hxsqs/til-hong-kong-gets-1-gbps-internet-for-26monthbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/6xsqs/zeitgeist-robots-will-fix-everything
The folks at the Venus Project and the larger Zeitgeist movement think society has many problems, and they are concerned. Hard to disagree. When a doctor is trying to cure what ails you, he'll typically treat more than the symptoms. After all, there are fundamental reasons why your body is ill. To cure you, the doctors want to correct the fundamental reasons why you're sick.

The same is true with problems in society. To fix what ails it, you must address the fundamental problems. The Zeitgeist movement has a new video out describing what they see as the problems and proposing their solutions. Yes, there are flaws in the way society is organized and operates now. But does the Zeitgeist movement have the solutions? Is money really the root of all evil? Are markets really bad? Is it wrong to compete for people's resources based on what they value? Don't we have historical evidence that central planning always fails in the long-run, with starvation and death being the primary results? Would supercomputers doing the planning really make a difference?

Transcript:

Hi everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio and this is a quick, brief review of Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, the video that was recently released on the internet. The diagnosis vs. the cure, I'm the host of Freedomain Radio the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web which you can find at freedomainradio.com.

So some stuff that I liked about Zeitgeist. I thought it was really, really good in some ways. I really liked the critical and principled approach to the existing system. A lot of the criticisms I massively share, which doesn't mean they're right, it just means that I happen to share them. The criticism of the bankers and the fiat currency system, the Federal Reserve, the slow enslavement of the tax cattle into endless debt obligation is wonderfully explicated and beautifully done. I've no issues with that as I didn't in the previous Zeitgeist films either.

I liked the idealization and passion, you know you often get criticized for being utopian if you propose improvements in the generalized socioeconomic human condition. They're not afraid to put their shiny forehead idealism front and center and for that I think there should be very much applauded. That's not an easy thing to do.

I liked the beginning of the film where they talked about the effects of child abuse on what is commonly called human nature to help people to understand that humans adapt to their environment, whether that environment is being plundered through banking and fiat currency or being bored and indoctrinated in government schools or being bullied and abused at school or at home. What results is not human nature but an adaptation to a particular environment which I thought was great.

And they had some of the same people that I've had on my show (Hi Gaby). So I thought it was really well done. The ridiculousness of GDP that you count in GDP things like the military industrial complex and health care and so on was very well explained. I thought that was great. This is of course a government measure and government controls so again to me it's just another example of how statism is ridiculous and immoral.

Evils of child abuse and its effects on the brain - fantastic. Couldn't get behind it more. The analysis of statist fiat currency predations... good, good, good. The parasitism of the financial sector in its current incarnation, we're shoveling money around and stealing homes from the poor is beautiful and so I really wanted to start off with the stuff that I thought was really well done and well reasoned and well argued.

Now... I thought could have been a tad improved. Look, this is something that's so common and has been detonated rationally and empirically so many times that it is a little bit wearying to see again and again and again, which is that somehow the voluntaryism of the free market, of people trading goods that they have built or own, voluntarily, without coercion, without fiat currency, without national debts, just trading either in-kind or through the medium of money, that this is a voluntary system. That is a voluntary system. The state control of counterfeiting currency is not voluntary. You try and setup a competing currency, they will throw your ass in jail. And so this conflation of violence with voluntaryism when they say "money is debt;" this is not accurate. This is not accurate.

A gold-based currency that's privately run is not debt. It's just a medium of exchange. Government fiat currency, government violent monopoly over currency is debt, but not money. Not money. Money has both private and public manifestations and the private manifestation of currency is not debt. Government money is debt. This is a big problem. It's like saying rape is sex and, therefore, we should get rid of sex. Saying money is debt; therefore, we should get rid of money is to conflate the violent monopoly of money "enjoyed by the state" with voluntary money systems that can be adopted or discarded at will without violence. So that's a problem.

Some economic problems that, I mean, you know, you know these guys haven't read their opposition and I always feel skeptical about people who make these kinds of claims. So when they say, well, there's one point in the film where they say "well if you were going to build a table, you would build it out of the best, conceivable materials to last the longest amount of time." But it's clearly not true. I mean it's not even close to true. What if you're building a table for a tree house that you know your kids are going to get bored in - bored of in 2 months. You make sure it's not dangerous and that's about it. The best possible materials... would you fly to get some mahogany from, I don't know, wherever mahogany comes from so that you could build the perfect table? No. You build it with the best materials that you can afford with the time and resources that you have available, but there are always compromises. Nothing is built perfectly because nobody lives forever.

So the idea that goods are built in order to be destroyed, that it's some sort of conspiracy - that they're going to build you stuff that's going to break one day after the warranty - economically speaking, that's not true. Consumers decide how long they want things to last. So some consumers want a cheap watch because they don't have a lot of money and they just need to tell the time. Some people want very expensive watches because, I don't know, they're status-driven ass clowns who need to know what time it is on Mars. I don't know. But it's consumers - if consumers want to pay more for things that last longer, which is generally what happens when you want things to last longer (they're more expensive), consumers will drive that. Anyway, we'll get to that next part later.

So, yeah, it's driven by the consumer. The idea that capitalism or the free market, voluntary trade, resists competition or the development of new products, I mean, you know, I was finding... it's really startling to me when people who are embarked upon criticizing an existing economic infrastructure or methodology don't look at what they're actually doing. First thing, if you want to figure out economics, look at what you're doing, first and foremost, and then you can sort of go into the theory after that, but start with the empiricism of you - baby - you.

So, innovation is resisted and you can't develop new things because the existing power structure doesn't want you to. Well, these guys are releasing their movie online. How do movie theaters feel about that? Well, they're bypassing all of that. Look at, do you think bookstores are really happy that the Kindle is out and that other forms of ebooks are out? Of course not. So the idea that innovation is sort of resisted... well, sure it is. I mean nobody likes innovation to come along and take away their economic advantage but it happens all the time. The only place it doesn't happen is where you have the government granting a public or private monopoly - through unions, through patents, through other forms of regulations, by raising the barrier to entry, through taxes and tariffs, and trade restrictions of every kind. But that's not the free market, right? That's the state.

And they have this bit in there where they bring up Mises, as if Mises would somehow be in support - von Mises - would somehow be in support of the existing system of fiat currency. Mises was the virulent, magnificent, moral hero when it came to opposing fiat currency and state control. From the 1920s when he wrote his books against socialism, the man was a titan. He was a hero for this kind of stuff. So to bring him into a film as if he's tacitly supporting the existing system of government fiat currency - I mean - irresponsibility isn't even the word for it. It's simply means that they've not read anything that he's written and this kind of mischaracterization of easily available viewpoints - you know, spend 10 minutes on the phone with an Austrian economist - it's a 1-900 number that's the worst phone sex you'll ever have. But you will learn something about von Mises's theories.

The experts, the experts, the experts. OK, so this is a - I mean - the child abuse stuff was different but as far as the economics go, I mean it's just a dull parade of bookish academics spouting Marxist cliché after Marxist cliché. I mean I spent 15 years as an entrepreneur in the cutting-edge of the free market, as a software entrepreneur. And so I actually have created jobs, I've actually been out there working in the free market. And so when people who have never had a real job - academics with tenure and they can't get fired, competition is incredibly limited through government dictates, when people who have never worked a day in their life as professionals in the free market, who've never created jobs, get on the screen and drone on and on to me about how the free market works, it's - I mean it's just kind of silly.

They've got an entire film about wealth creation and the free market and they don't have anybody who's ever created wealth in the free market on it. I mean to me it's like having a show that's all about the black experience narrated entirely by white guys. It's like - you know, dude, if you're going to do a film about the black experience, invite a few brothers on the panel, that's all I'm saying. If you're going to do a film about what it's like to be gay, maybe have one or two gay people talking about the actual experience of what it's like rather than people who've just read about it. I'm just saying. Get an entrepreneur or two because what entrepreneurs will tell you is that the government inhibits growth... regulations and controls and all of that. So, barriers to creating jobs is regulations and taxation, barriers to expansion, and so on. They'll all tell you about, at least almost all of them will.

So I just see another academic, another academic, the lining books and all that kind of stuff and also planned obsolescence. You know, it's funny you talk about consumer goods are designed to fall apart. That's like, can you turn around? There's a whole bookshelf behind you of books that will last probably 100 years or more. Anyway, this is... I get tired of the theoreticians. I'd really just rather talk to people who've actually been in the free market and learned through experience and reality rather books and theories written by other people, you know, like Marx and Engels - two rich, young white kids who never worked a day in their lives talking all about the experiences of the working class. I mean, it's just silly. Anyway, so we talked about that.

Resource-based economy, I mean, of course, it is Marxism with robots. It's Marxism with robots. Central planning will never, ever work. Central planning will never, ever, ever, ever work and I will take an argument from a central planner if that central planner or those who advocate for it have effectively dealt with a number of very powerful criticisms of central planning. If they ignore them., then I just assume they're full of crap.

Basis of economics - resources are finite but desires are infinite. So how are you going to allocate resources in order to get the greatest efficiency if that's what people want to do? Well, without prices, you can't allocate resources efficiently. I mean, you can say "well, a thousand widgets are better than 500 widgets." But you don't know if a thousand widgets are better than a thousand pieces of paper or a printer or a toupee or a children's toy or anything like that. You simply can't compare different investments in capital, different forms of labor, different allocations of capital, you can't do it without prices because prices signal the true empirical, acted-upon demand of the consumer. Central planning can't push that stuff out. It is a pull economy - that's how you know what is worthwhile, what is valuable, what is the best use of resources to satisfy human needs. So without prices you can't do it. You can't do it.

Money, like if you have - I don't know - $10,000 in the bank and every dollar you spend on something is a dollar you don't spend on everything else. So the fact that resources are scarce must be mirrored by money because money is scarce for people and that mirrors it so you have to make rational decisions knowing that everything you buy is everything else you're not going to buy. That's how we know what people actually want. That's how we know resources are most efficiently allocated.

Yea, there are problems with things like scarcity, of course. Right, I mean there are things - problems like peak oil, there are problems like environmentally-friendly disposal mechanisms. I mean peak oil is all run by the government. The waste disposal is all run by the government. You know, these things are all run by the government so saying that this is a problem inherent in the free market when the government has taken over all of these things... I mean imagine a world where the price of oil wasn't set by OPEC or by wars in the Middle East or by other forms of bribery and threats from the government, or a series of governments. Imagine if it was open to the free market. It would be a whole different kind of world. Imagine a world where roads had been built by the free market rather than by the government. It would be a whole different world.

Anyway, you understand, right? So the calculation problem... if you think about your day and, again, when it comes to big abstracts like economics and world resources, start thinking about your day. Don't go read books and think you've learned anything. Every day you make decisions, hundreds of decisions about resource allocation and what you're going to do with your time, what you're going to do with your money, and whether you're going to invest or whether you're going to save or whether you're going to spend or whether you're going to defer purchases or whether you're going to wait until things get cheaper or whatever, right? You make literally hundreds of decisions every day and each one of your decisions affects hundreds of other decisions of the person next to you, and this multiplication over 6 billion or 7 billion or 8 billion or 10 billion people, or however much we're going to end up with, is individual decisions multiplied hundreds and thousands and trillions and billions of time every single day. And each one of those decisions has ripple effects on everybody else... at least a large number of other people's decisions.

There's no conceivable way that a computer can simulate the unknown choice-preferences of billions of individuals allocating their own scarce resources to maximize their happiness in the long-run. You can't do it. You can't do it. There's no conceivable way that you can do it because no computer can be psychic. So because of this, you're going to end up with someone saying "here's how the resources should be allocated. It's going to be arbitrary. Even if it's programmed into computers, somebody's got to put the parameters in, somebody's got to put the scale of preferences in, and having people fill out forms is not the same because, if you fill out a form, you're not dealing with your own scarce resource called money. Right?

So you fill out a form and take everything, right? People will say "No you have to choose some things." But money already does that. Money and prices, as long as they're not enforced through coercion, as long as there's competition in money, and so on. Fantastic. You can't overcome barter, right? So in these donut cities of paradise, I've got a lawn mower, my neighbor has an iPad... well, let's just say we lean over and say "let's trade them." I mean I don't want to go and send mine back to the store and you have to go and fill out a form and get it from someone hoping that nobody else wants before you. We'll just trade it. And as soon as you have that kind of trade occurring, which is inevitable because it's so efficient, then you're going to have money developing, even if it's orange peels, even if it's bits of salt, even if its - you know - even if it's - I don't know - the eyeballs of your worst enemy. There's going to be something that you're going to use in trade. And that can't be overcome. So what are you going to do when people start doing that? Well... these kinds of questions are never answered.

So let's keep it... let's keep it quick. So there's this bit in the movie where - you know - it's vaguely funny. It's sort of creative where people start saying "Ah, this is Marxism. This is Communism. This is Socialism. My father died to fight this kind of stuff," and so on. And they just make a few jokes like "Oh, the narrator died," and blah blah blah. And then they pretended it doesn't exist. Well, that's not an intellectual rebuttal to central planning, to the elimination of money, to the elimination of class, to the elimination of the stock market, of investment. These are all Marxist ideas. So, if you're not Marxist, tell me how you're different. Don't just say "well, I mean - it's just silly. I don't like Marxism." Well, that's not an answer. You just know... that just tells me you know Marxism is unpopular.

Venus Project criticisms... laborers are exploited. Technology steals jobs. Technology does not steal jobs. I mean if you... you could get full employment, you can get full employment in the world tomorrow just by eliminating farm machinery and have everyone go back to raising... growing all the crops by hand. You know, at the turn of the century in America, last century, 70-80% of the people were involved in farming. Now it's 2 or 3%. You could get back to 70% - just get rid of all of your farm machinery. Do we really think that would be step forward, or would we understand that's a massive step back? Technology doesn't steal jobs. Technology creates wealth. It does shift people... when technology replaces someone's job, that person has to go and retrain and that's a net-negative for them in the short-run, for sure. But if it's allowed in the free market, technology creates jobs. We know that it does that because people invest in it and the technology which succeeds is economically more efficient than either the labor that came before it, or the technology would fail. It's inevitable - if it succeeds, it's been more efficient. So...

Religion is bad. Money and lending and usury are bad. And, you know, most fundamentally, human nature is defined though economics. And violence and dysfunction arises out of class conflict and, as the film talks about, income disparity. Well, you know, that's a testable hypothesis, and they seem to be very keen on science, so fantastic. If you think that it is income disparity that causes problems, then you have the significant problem explaining why mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, eating disorders and disassociation, why they're so prevalent among the rich. If people who are wealthy are mentally healthier, then how is it that the wealthiest people in the world - i.e., the recipients of everybody, like all the recipients of the bailout money and the people who created all of these monstrous soul-sucking, eyeball-sucking financial instruments that pillage the general public, they were all incredibly wealthy and incredibly well-educated, and complete sociopaths. So money does not breed mental health. And there are plenty of studies which show that, as wealth increases in a company - in a country, mental problems increase. Now they'll say it's because of a lack of equality but, even if you look at a particular class which only mingles with itself - it's mostly equal - there... most of them are pretty damn miserable. So it's a bit of a problem and, again, you know, look at the counter-evidence, present the counter-evidence, and then tell us how it's wrong. But don't just pretend it doesn't exist. It's not very honest.

And, of course, the solution is the elimination of the free market, money of any kind, prices, wages, jobs, but with robots as the new proletariat. Well, this is straight out of Marxism.

OK, look - I mean I've got criticisms but, so what? Who cares, right? Well, the only reason it's important is, you know, they're very keen in the movie as saying "well, science is great because you've got competing hypothesis and there's no ego involved and you keep experimenting with things to find the best answer, and so on. Fantastic. Look, if you want to go live in the Zeitgeist floating cloud city of the gods and beg your computerized HAL for your morning bowl of porridge, fantastic. Go for it. I think it's a fantastic experiment. I would love to see what happens. I think, let's have that in the world of the future. Once we get rid of the government, once we get rid of the coercive control and profiting from fiat currency and national debts and all of these other horrible, enslaving mechanisms. Fantastic. You know, if you want to tax your super computer for your new shoes. Great. You want to give up money? Fantastic. You don't want a stock exchange in your city? Beautiful. No problem. According to all that rational laws of economics, it's going to be a complete disaster. But - hey - I'm not a guy to stand between a dreamer and his dreams, or any group of dreamers and their dreams. So - hey - if you, in a free society of the future, you don't want to use money, you want to subject your economic life to a personal computer or a massive supercomputer and whoever programs it, I don't want to - I mean I would never do that in a million years. I'd fight like crazy to avoid that kind of future. But if you want to do it, fantastic. I'm not going to use any force to stop you. If you don't want to use money, no problem. Go for it. I really want to see what happens. I really, really do. I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong in this area. But I do want to use money. I do want to trade. I do want to barter. And I will never use force against those who wish to abandon money. But I damn-well expect the same civility in return.

]]>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 20:10:51 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/6xsqs/zeitgeist-robots-will-fix-everythingbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/jtsqs/quadrotor-robots
You've just got to love science... one of the great things about science fiction is how quickly it becomes non-fiction. Putting aside the potential for Skynet or I, Robot, imagine for a moment artificial intelligence (AI) quadrotor robots that could build buildings with limited involvement by construction workers. (Perhaps after different robots destroy them.) There's quite a bit of excitement about these. (Some are even making their own with books explaining how to do it.)

What would you do with these drones, especially considering their amazing maneuverability? Who would be against this technology and why?

]]>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 18:38:48 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/jtsqs/quadrotor-robotsbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/ydsqs/mind-boggling
Talk about "mind=blown." Imagine a world where you can manipulate objects solely with your mind. It's here, it's now, and it's incredible. Consider every industry. Consider every skill. Consider every human action. What are the uses for this technology? Then take it to the next logical level - that this technology will be implanted in our heads. How can it... will it... change your life?

Transcript:

Up until now, our communication with machines has always been limited to conscious and direct forms. Whether it's something simple like turning on the lights with a switch, or even as complex as programming robotics, we have always had to give a command to a machine, or even a series of commands, in order for it to do something for us. Communication between people on the other hand, is far more complex and a lot more interesting, because we take into account so much more than what is explicitly expressed. We observe facial expressions, body language, and we can intuit feelings and emotions from our dialogue with one another. This actually forms a large part of our decision-making process. Our vision is to introduce this whole new realm of human interaction into human-computer interaction, so that computers can understand not only what you direct it to do, but it can also respond to your facial expressions and emotional experiences. And what better way to do this than by interpreting the signals naturally produced by our brain, our center for control and experience.

Well, it sounds like a pretty good idea, but this task, as Bruno mentioned, isn't an easy one for two main reasons: First, the detection algorithms. Our brain is made up of billions of active neurons, around 170,000 km of combined axon length. When these neurons interact, the chemical reaction emits an electrical impulse which can be measured. The majority of our functional brain is distributed over the outer surface layer of the brain. And to increase the area that's available for mental capacity, the brain surface is highly folded. Now this cortical folding presents a significant challenge for interpreting surface electrical impulses. Each individual's cortex is folded differently, very much like a fingerprint. So even though a signal may come from the same functional part of the brain, by the time the structure has been folded, its physical location is very different between individuals, even identical twins. There is no longer any consistency in the surface signals.

Our breakthrough was to create an algorithm that unfolds the cortex, so that we can map the signals closer to its source, and therefore making it capable of working across a mass population. The second challenge is the actual device for observing brainwaves. EEG measurements typically involve a hairnet with an array of sensors, like the one that you can see here in the photo. A technician will put the electrodes onto the scalp using a conductive gel or paste and usually after a procedure of preparing the scalp by light abrasion. Now this is quite time consuming and isn't the most comfortable process. And on top of that, these systems actually cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.

So with that, I'd like to invite onstage Evan Grant, who is one of last year's speakers, who's kindly agreed to help me to demonstrate what we've been able to develop.

So the device that you see is a 14-channel, high-fidelity EEG acquisition system. It doesn't require any scalp preparation, no conductive gel or paste. It only takes a few minutes to put on and for the signals to settle. It's also wireless, so it gives you the freedom to move around. And compared to the tens of thousands of dollars for a traditional EEG system, this headset only costs a few hundred dollars. Now on to the detection algorithms. So facial expressions -- as I mentioned before in emotional experiences -- are actually designed to work out of the box with some sensitivity adjustments available for personalization. But with the limited time we have available, I'd like to show you the cognitive suite, which is the ability for you to basically move virtual objects with your mind.

Now, Evan is new to this system, so what we have to do first is create a new profile for him. He's obviously not Joanne -- so we'll "add user." Evan. Okay. So the first thing we need to do with the cognitive suite is to start with training a neutral signal. With neutral, there's nothing in particular that Evan needs to do. He just hangs out. He's relaxed. And the idea is to establish a baseline or normal state for his brain, because every brain is different. It takes eight seconds to do this. And now that that's done, we can choose a movement-based action. So Evan choose something that you can visualize clearly in your mind.

Evan Grant: Let's do "pull."

Tan Le: Okay. So let's choose "pull." So the idea here now is that Evan needs to imagine the object coming forward into the screen. And there's a progress bar that will scroll across the screen while he's doing that. The first time, nothing will happen, because the system has no idea how he thinks about "pull." But maintain that thought for the entire duration of the eight seconds. So: one, two, three, go. Okay. So once we accept this, the cube is live. So let's see if Evan can actually try and imagine pulling. Ah, good job! (Applause) That's pretty amazing.

So we have a little bit of time available, so I'm going to ask Evan to do a really difficult task. And this one is difficult because it's all about being able to visualize something that doesn't exist in our physical world. This is "disappear." So what you want -- at least with movement-based actions, we do that all the time, so you can visualize it. But with "disappear," there's really no analogies. So Evan, what you want to do here is to imagine the cube slowly fading out, okay. Same sort of drill. So: one, two, three, go. Okay. Let's try that. Oh, my goodness. He's just too good. Let's try that again.

EG: Losing concentration.

TL: But we can see that it actually works, even though you can only hold it for a little bit of time. As I said, it's a very difficult process to imagine this. And the great thing about it is that we've only given the software one instance of how he thinks about "disappear." As there is a machine learning algorithm in this --

So as you can see before, there is a leveling system built into this software so that as Evan, or any user, becomes more familiar with the system, they can continue to add more and more detections, so that the system begins to differentiate between different distinct thoughts. And once you've trained up the detections, these thoughts can be assigned or mapped to any computing platform, application or device.

So I'd like to show you a few examples, because there are many possible applications for this new interface. In games and virtual worlds, for example, your facial expressions can naturally and intuitively be used to control an avatar or virtual character. Obviously, you can experience the fantasy of magic and control the world with your mind. And also, colors, lighting, sound and effects, can dynamically respond to your emotional state to heighten the experience that you're having, in real time. And moving on to some applications developed by developers and researchers around the world, with robots and simple machines, for example -- in this case, flying a toy helicopter simply by thinking lift with your mind.

The technology can also be applied to real world applications -- in this example, a smart home. You know, from the user interface of the control system to opening curtains or closing curtains. And of course also to the lighting -- turning them on or off. And finally, to real life-changing applications such as being able to control an electric wheelchair. In this example, facial expressions are mapped to the movement commands.

Man: Now blink right to go right. Now blink left to turn back left. Now smile to go straight.

TL: We really -- Thank you.

We are really only scratching the surface of what is possible today. And with the community's input, and also with the involvement of developers and researchers from around the world, we hope you can help us to shape where the technology goes from here. Thank you so much.

]]>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 12:44:04 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/ydsqs/mind-bogglingbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/wdsqs/civil-disobedience-against-the-censors
In his famous treatise On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau argued that individuals can promote justice by disobeying the law. History is replete with examples of civil disobedience. Mohandas Gandhi used civil disobedience to achieve independence in India. Using civil disobedience, Martin Luther King won a Nobel Prize for his work in the US civil rights movement, claiming "You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice." South Africans used it to abolish apartheid. Women marched, had hunger strikes, and went to jail in order to gain the right to vote during women's suffrage. The Boston Tea Party used it to express their frustration having to pay taxes without representation, leading to the War for Independence. Examples of smaller civil disobedience abound in most every activist ideology. (In other news, UK students smash Treasury and Supreme Court buildings as parliament triples tuition fees.) But how do we determine when civil disobedience is and is not justified? Is following the law and abiding by the purported social contract always moral? Is it ever acceptable to break the law if the law is against our conscience? Are these hackers justified in attacking what even UN Human Rights head suggests is censorship?

FTA:

ORGANISERS of the group behind cyber attacks on mastercard.com and other websites have vowed to extend their campaign to anyone with an "anti-WikiLeaks agenda". In an online chat with Agence France-Presse, organisers of "Anonymous" said thousands of volunteers were taking part in their defence of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, whom they described as a "free-speech martyr"...

Anonymous launched its first distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack on Saturday, taking down PayPal's official blog, ThePayPalBlog.com, for at least eight hours. Since then they have targeted the websites of other companies that have severed ties to Assange or WikiLeaks, including Mastercard and the Swiss Post Office bank.

The website of the Swedish prosecutor's office pursuing Assange on allegations of sex crimes was also hit, as was the website of the lawyer representing two Swedish women in the case. "The current target is mastercard.com, but anyone that has an anti-Wikileaks agenda is within our scope of attack," they said in the online chat with AFP...

"Operation Payback stands for free speech and no censorship, which is also what Assange is going for," they said. "The general motivation is freedom of information/speech, which is currently under attack...

In a classic DDoS attack, a "botnet" of zombie computers, machines infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming its servers, slowing service or knocking it offline completely.

]]>Fri, 29 Sep 2017 11:51:04 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/wdsqs/civil-disobedience-against-the-censorsbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/8dsqs/til-att-microcells-rule-especially-when-theyre-free
Today I learned that AT&T will send you a free microcell/femtocell (and maybe even a free phone) for use in your home if you can't get a good signal for your mobile phone. Submitted by one of our members:

"Something you might want to consider for a Today I Learned Tuesday topic that others might not be aware of. Not sure if it works for other cellular carriers, but worth a try... For years I have been frustrated with the signal I get from my AT&T Blackberry in my home. (I've called their support many times over the years but they were unable to improve the service.) The only way I could even make or receive calls in my home was to have the phone directly next to the window (and, even then, the call was full of static and often dropped). So I called AT&T with the intent of canceling my service. They offered to send me a 3G MicroCell for free which effectively creates a mini cellular tower in your home and gives you five bars. They even overnighted it to me. Though I had told the representative that I had a 2G phone, they said it would work. When I installed it the next day, it didn't work. I called AT&T back and they said I could upgrade my phone to 3G for $99 and a 2-year agreement. When I told them that I would instead be canceling the service if I had to pay anymore money to get a phone that worked in my home, they upgraded my phone for free (they charged me the $99 for the phone and then gave me a full credit to offset the price). Now I have a new Blackberry, a MicroCell, and five bars of coverage anywhere in my house... all for free. Though I'm still very unhappy with AT&T for all of the years that I didn't have coverage in my home and, granted, I understand that the cellular companies are likely doing this because they have to find a way to decrease the bandwidth strain/network congestion on their networks, I think it's proper to give credit where credit is due. Thanks AT&T."

8. Make a Reflector with Tinfoil. Note that a tinfoil router may boost your signal, but will also make it more directional.

* Cut a tinfoil circle with the tinfoil on the inside of a piece of paper or some cardboard large enough to wrap around the router. If you want to get fancier than this, cut a shallow parabola and put the hole for the antenna at the focal point.

]]>Thu, 28 Sep 2017 15:44:29 -0500https://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/mdsqs/til-how-to-increase-wireless-router-signalbraincravehttps://valme.io/c/relationships/dating/braincrave/98sqs/net-neutrality-regulation-and-liberty
Governments love to pander equality and anti-discrimination laws (well, granted - they were for discrimination before they were against it). Their latest villain? The Internet Service Providers (ISP). Why should you care about the net neutrality debate? The basic debate comes down to this: should government be allowed to regulate the Internet or not and, if so, how much power should they have? What are the benefits and limitations of each position? How do property rights play into the debate (especially considering that ISPs are already regulated)? Do you have a "right" to access the Internet at a particular speed for a particular price?

FTA:

Flat-rate versus tiered-pricing structures, data equality versus prioritized content-the arguments rage on in the U.S. with no end in sight, even as other high-tech countries, South Korea in particular, claim to successfully moved beyond the issue.

South Korea, regarded as the world's leading country in terms of making high-speed broadband Internet access available to its 50 million citizens, offers basic and premium network access to broadband subscribers, Tae-Yol Yoo, executive vice president of Korea Telecom (KT), said October 15 during a telecommunications forum The State of Telecom-2010 at Columbia University in New York City. "If somebody wants to load some premium content (such as a video), they can do it on the premium network," he said. "Of course, they pay for it."

Net neutrality (flat-rate pricing and equal priority status given to all data) was not a successful business model for KT, Yoo said. KT tried usage-based pricing, where subscribers paid for the amount of bandwidth they consumed, but abandoned that effort two years ago, in part because 5 percent of Internet users in that country were hogging 50 percent of all Internet bandwidth. These super users were slowing down traffic for everyone else, making other customers less likely to use (and pay for) Internet access.

Instead KT separated its Internet backbone into a premium service that functions like a fast-paced superhighway for video, multimedia and other heavy traffic, and a basic service for most normal users. As the name would imply, premium customers pay more for use of the service. In return, KT assures them that it will provide data transfers at a particular speed.

The cost of KT's premium service? Roughly $28 per month. Yoo said his company must keep prices low due to competition from the country's two other major telecommunications companies.